The Government Just Downgraded Women’s Work

Educated women are the biggest threat—so their professional pathways are being dismantled

The Department of Education just decided that nursing isn’t a “professional” degree. Neither is social work. Or occupational therapy. Or physical therapy. Or public health.

But theology? That made the cut.

This isn’t about academic standards, as they want you to believe. The fields they stripped of “professional” status just happen to be the ones overwhelmingly powered by women and people of color.

Come July 1, 2026, only 11 primary fields will be “professional practice doctorates”: medicine, pharmacy, dentistry, optometry, law, veterinary medicine, osteopathic medicine, podiatry, chiropractic, theology, and clinical psychology. That last one—my degree—was at the center of intense debate and ultimately kept its status…for now.

What got left out? Advanced nursing degrees (including nurse practitioners and CRNAs), physician assistants, social work, occupational therapy, Physical therapy, audiology, social work, and public health programs.

Photo by Rusty Watson on Unsplash

Why this matters

This isn’t just about prestige (though it’s absolutely a statement on what kinds of knowledge this country deems soft, less rigorous, less valuable). The shift directly impacts federal student loan access. Under the new rules, students in programs no longer classified as “professional” will face lower federal student loan borrowing limits: a maximum aggregate limit of $100,000 for standard graduate students, compared with $200,000 for professional students.

For nursing students whose graduate programs often cost $150,000 to $200,000, this change isn’t symbolic. It’s prohibitive.

What happened to nurses being the heroes that got us through COVID? We’re facing documented shortages in nursing, mental health care, and primary care—especially in rural and underserved communities where advanced practice nurses are often the only providers available. Shouldn’t that reality matter to any administration concerned with public health?

And consider social work: Clinical social workers are the largest group of mental health providers in the United States. These aren’t niche professions. They’re critical infrastructure. They’re the connective tissue of our entire health and social-service system.

Let’s look at who works in these fields:

• Nursing: 88% women

• Occupational Therapy: 83% women

• Social Work: nearly 90% of new MSW graduates are women, with a large proportion women of color.

These are professions in which women, and especially women of color, build expertise that directly influences communities, policy, and the next generation. They are fields that advocate for children, stabilize families, address the nation’s mental health crisis, responding to trauma, support immigrants, fight poverty, fortify public health, and strengthen civic life.

So why downgrade them?

Strategic Misogyny

Educated women are the biggest threat to this administration and their goal to strip women of autonomy. A government threatened by educated women does what governments throughout history have done: it tries to shrink the space in which they can wield authority and earn money.

Consider the contrast. The fields that kept their professional designation are almost all historically dominated by men and still disproportionately male at the top. The state sanctions and protects the domains controlled by men, especially affluent white men, while destabilizing the ones that give women and people of color economic independence, authority, and professional mobility.

This is not just misogyny; it is strategic misogyny.

If you want fewer women living independently, fewer women shaping policy, fewer women pursuing advanced education, fewer women leading community institutions, then you don’t have to ban them from the classroom. You simply defund the pathways. You make degrees that lead to professional autonomy financially prohibitive. You degrade the professions that have allowed women to build economic lives not dependent on a husband who could abuse, abandon, or control them.

You make their degrees worth less. You make their fields less attractive. You make their expertise a punchline.

This decision by DOE is part of the broader backlash against educated women, women voters, women workers, and women experts. It aligns neatly with book bans, attacks on diversity programs, restrictions on reproductive healthcare, and the chronic underfunding of care work. It reflects a worldview that treats expertise as legitimate only when it reinforces the status quo—and illegitimate when it empowers those historically kept out of it.

Women’s knowledge is not a threat to society; it is one of the few things still holding society together.

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What you can do:

These regulations are still being finalized, which means there’s time for public comment and advocacy. Professional associations are already mobilizing. The question is whether policymakers will listen…or whether we’ll look back in a few years wondering why we can’t find enough nurses, social workers, and therapists to meet our nation’s needs.

Contact your representatives. Submit public comments during the rulemaking period. Support the professional organizations fighting this change.

And call this what it is: an attempt to control women by dismantling the professions that empower them.

Jo-Ann Finkelstein is the author of the award-winning book, Sexism & Sensibility: Raising Empowered Resilient Girls in The Modern World.